The One-Democratic-State Solution Is Gaining Ground

Gaza shifts to a new solution

Palestinians search for options as chances of two states recede, reports Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem

Sunday September 14, 2003
The Observer

He smiles and raises his two fingers in a sign of victory, gazing over the thousands of supporters that have flocked to his side to protect him.
Yasser Arafat last week escaped from the political margins thanks to the Israeli government's declaration to 'remove' him on Thursday.
International pressure may prevent Israel from carrying out its threat but its policies in the West Bank and Gaza, according to Palestinian and Israeli analysts, are slowly strangling any prospect of Arafat's dream, a viable Palestinian state, becoming a reality.
As the death toll mounts from the war between the Israeli government and Hamas, the bulldozers are busy, clearing more land for the separation fence, for new houses in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and new roads to weld the settlements onto the state of Israel.
Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian Minister of Labour, said that as each mile of the separation fence and each new settlement house was built, 'the viability of a two-state solution is less and less. A large number of Palestinians realise that a Palestinian state is no longer practical'.
Since 1988 the widely preferred solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the two-state solution. In the past year, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Presi dent George W. Bush have also adopted this vision.
But growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis are realising that a point may have been reached where it is impossible for Israel to disengage from the West Bank and Gaza and leave room and resources for a viable Palestinian state.
Khatib believes the only way forward for Palestinians is to accept Israel's control and demand equal rights, an idea that is gaining momentum among Palestinians.
'When I used to analyse opinion polls, it was clear that support for the one-state solution was a fast-growing trend although still a minority. Sooner or later things will need to move in that direction and the fault will lie with Israel's right-wing parties,' he said.
In a document sent to the United States last year, the PLO warned: 'If the international community continues to remain unwilling to rein in Israeli settlement construction and expansion, irreversible facts on the ground and the de facto apartheid system such facts create will force Palestinian policy-makers to re-evaluate the plausibility of a two-state solution.'
The road network which serves the Israeli West Bank settlements is integrated with the Israeli network as are telecommunications, electricity and water. In many areas it is not clear where the West Bank begins and Israel ends.
Israeli settlements have become so entrenched in the West Bank that according to Diana Buttu, a legal adviser to the PLO, the only direction for the Palestinians would be to call for equality in a single state for both Arabs and Israelis.
However, such a state would lose its already slim Jewish majority within a few years because of the high Arab birth rate and the low Jewish birth rate. Currently there are 5.4 million Jews and 4.93m Arabs on the territories controlled by Israel. According to projections, in 2020 there will be 6.69m Jews and 8.49m Arabs.
A former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, who is preparing for a return to politics, emphasised the danger in an article last week in the Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth. He wrote that Sharon's failure to act decisively in creating a Palestinian state would 'endanger the whole Zionist enterprise'.
Furthermore, he could already discern a Palestinian position coming to the fore which demands not 'two states for two peoples', but one state from west of the Jordan River.
'However, (and so the Palestinians will demand) this should conform to the spirit of the twenty-first century, i.e. be democratic, secular, with "one citizen, one vote." This position is liable to gain support from large parts of the world, as long as no acceptable Israeli plan is on the table,' Barak wrote.